Landmark Designation Report
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LANDMARK DESIGNATION REPORT The Cowell House 171 San Marcos Avenue Landmark Designation Report December 2012 Landmark No. XXX 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS page OVERVIEW 3 BUILDING DESCRIPTION 4 MASTER ARCHITECTS: MORROW + MORROW 10 EVOLUTION OF SF’S ARCHITECTURAL STYLES 11 SF MODERN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 11 STREAMLINE MODERNE 16 SECOND BAY TRADITION 17 FOREST HILL NEIGBHORHOOD DEVELOPMENT 19 ARTICLE 10 LANDMARK DESIGNATION 21 Significance 21 Integrity 22 Boundary 22 Character-Defining Features 22 Property Information 23 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 23 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 24 The Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) is a seven‐member body that makes recommendations to the Board of Supervisors regarding the designation of landmark buildings and districts. The regulations governing landmarks and landmark districts are found in Article 10 of the Planning Code. The HPC is staffed by the San Francisco Planning Department. This draft Landmark Designation Report is subject to possible revision and amendment during the initiation and designation process. Only language contained within the Article 10 designation ordinance, adopted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, should be regarded as final. 2 The Cowell House 171 San Marcos Avenue Built: 1933 Architect: Morrow + Morrow OVERVIEW Built in 1933 in the Forest Hill neighborhood, the Cowell House is the first known Modern residential building in San Francisco. It was designed by master architects Irving and Gertrude Morrow a few years after the couple designed the architectural design components of the Golden Gate Bridge. The detached, redwood-clad building reflects an early fusion of the International Style, Streamline Moderne, and Second Bay Tradition. It embodies the woodsy aesthetic that came to characterize the Modern interpretation of the region-specific Second Bay Tradition. The Cowell House is the first of a few dozen architect-designed Modern residential buildings constructed in the years leading up to WWII. The building is significant for its architectural expression and for its association with master architects Morrow + Morrow. The building is also significant for its association with the accomplished Cowell family, in particular, Henry Cowell, an avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. The interior of the house was designed with acoustics and performances in mind. An open-plan living room lined with paperboard cabinets absorbs sound and enhances the acoustics. 3 BUILDING DESCRIPTION Primary Façade Overview Located on a steeply sloped site in the hilly, secluded Forest Hill neighborhood, the four-story Cowell House features unpainted redwood siding, floor-to-ceiling stacked steel-sash awning windows, and rounded Streamline Moderne design elements. Due to the site’s down slope, the building’s stories were inverted, with a street-level garage story topping the three lower stories. The primary entrance is accessed via a switchback pathway that hugs the hillside. 4 Primary Façade: Garage The primary façade features a prominent articulated garage at street level. A historic awning garage door, comprised of six lights and painted, is set back along the raised driveway. A flush overhang projects slightly over the garage door. To the right of the door is the street number topped by a historic lighting fixture. Wood side walls line the driveway. To the right of side walls is a switchback path that leads down the hill to the primary entry. To the left is a secondary path and set of stairs that leads down to the secondary entry. 5 Primary Façade: Entrance The primary entrance is located down the hill and to the right (west) of the garage. It features a curved metal portico supported by a single slender pole, a curved half wall clad in horizontal redwood siding topped with a wood sill, a glazed metal door with horizontal munitns, and a metal-sash window likewise glazed with the same muntin pattern. The horizontality expressed in the entry door and window muntin pattern is emphasized in fenestration throughout the building. Adjacent to the entry portico is a series of four stacked wood louvered vents. Between two of the vents is a raised imprint, carved of wood, that reads “Morrow – & – Morrow Architects – 1933” 6 West Facade The west façade is clad in horizontal redwood siding punched with six window openings. Windows are metal sash with a horizontal muntin pattern. An adjacent pathway leads to a service entrance at the base of the bottom story. The façade terminates with metal coping at the open roof deck. 7 East Facade The articulated east façade features a projecting wing, a secondary entrance and a prominent window wall. The façade is clad in flush horizontal redwood siding and the windows metal sash awning windows match the building’s dominant horizontal muntin pattern. A large roof deck is visible at this elevation as are several stacked accordion chimney stacks. The roof deck was designed a sleeping porch, a popular amenity at that time espoused by architects influenced by Arts and Crafts design. 8 South Facade The dramatic south façade is located at the rear of the building. The façade is clad in horizontal redwood siding and features two prominent squared window bays. The prominent east bay displays floor- to-ceiling metal-sash windows set with a horizontal muntin pattern. This pattern is found at the three sides of the bay. The bay is topped with a slightly projecting cornice. The window bay to the west displays a smaller window opening with the same fenestration pattern. Beneath the flush sliding glass metal doors, with the same sash material and muntin pattern as the upper windows, that lead to projecting wood-clad balconies. A small divided light window separates the two balconies. Below the balconies are contemporary sliding glass doors, designed in a compatible muntin configuration, that lead to a contemporary deck enclosed with metal rail. 9 Master Architects: Morrow & Morrow The Cowell House is one of the few extant Modern buildings designed by the firm Morrow + Morrow. Irving and Gertrude Morrow practiced architecture together from 1925, five years after their marriage, until 1952, when Irving passed away. In addition to the firm’s best-known work – the architectural design for San Francisco’s iconic Art Deco Golden Gate Bridge, for which Irving also chose the rust-red color – the couple designed numerous residences, theaters and living complexes in the San Francisco Bay Area. The couple married in 1920 and in 1925 opened their small firm, Morrow & Morrow. Prior to this partnership, both Irving and Gertrude had established architectural practices. The firm of Irving and his partner William Garren had, since 1916, designed houses, hotels, banks, schools and commercial buildings. Born in 1884, Irving earned a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1906 and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1908 to 1911. Gertrude was a pioneering female architect in a profession dominated by men. She was just the second woman to receive her master’s degree in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley (1914). She worked in the office of Henry H. Gutterson until she received her California license in 1916. At this point Gertrude opened her own firm, supervising the development of Mason-McDuffie’s St. Francis Wood, which had been Gutterson’s project before he enlisted in war camp service during World War I. The firm Morrow & Morrow designed and remodeled dozens of buildings throughout the Bay Area. While Irving is typically credited as the designer for the Golden Gate Bridge, several historians, including Gwendolyn Wright and Inge Horton, persuasively argue that Gertrude was an uncredited participant in the bridge design.2 Gertrude was also an active member of the Association of Women in Architecture, the Architectural Institute of America, and she produced a radio show with Martha Meade called “New Ideas for Old Houses.”3 The firm’s work appears to have peaked by the early 1940s. The October 1940 issue of Architect and Engineer mentions Irving Morrow, along with Miller & Pflueger and Gardner Dailey as early San Francisco architects inspired by Le Corbusier and other European Modern architects. 4 However, despite their prestigious commissions and the groundbreaking 1933 design of the Cowell House, the firm did not produce celebrated Modern buildings in San Francisco after 1940 and are largely excluded from the existing literature on San Francisco Modern design. The firm’s commissions in San Francisco include the Gelber House (1344 Union Street, 1937); the Golden Gate International Exposition, Alameda-Contra Costa County Building (1939, now demolished); Theater Building, 24th Street at Noe Street (1940); the McCay Flats (unknown location, 1940), and the Navy Reserve Armory (Treasure Island, c.1943). The Cowell House was highlighted in the December 1935 issue of Architect & Engineer, accompanied by Irving Morrow’s rebuttal of many commonly voiced critiques of Modern architecture: “It is adduced as a weakness that all modernists use flat roofs, ‘ribbon’ and corner windows, pipe rails, projecting shelves and canopies, and so on. It is accepted as entirely natural, however, that all classicists use columns, cornices, balusters, modillions, garlands, etc.; that all Gothicists use pointed arches, buttresses, label molds, trefoils, quatrefoils, cusps, etc. In other words, the real objection is not to the common use of architectural motives, but to the fact that the vocabulary is unfamiliar, hence irritating.”5 2 The Morrow’s designed the bridge in conjunction with structural engineers Joseph Strauss and Charles Ellis. 3 Inge Schaefer Horton, Early Women Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area: The lives and work of fifty professionals, 1890 – 1951. (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Co. Publishers, 2010), 324-334. 4 Architect and Engineer (October, 1940): 41. 5 Irving F. Morrow, “Modern Architecture and Common Sense,” Architect & Engineer (Dec. 1935): 53. 10 Evolution of San Francisco’s Architectural Styles The extant architectural heritage of San Francisco dates almost exclusively to the United States era.